faithjoyandlove: The power of play

The.power.of.play.
Those 4 words stand alone. Before I became a mom I was an educator of young children and families. I have been preaching this to others all of my adult life. My kids have been at a preschool that promotes this exact motto and I have been listening to it for 7 years. I have read countless books on the importance of spending time with your children, even just 10 minutes of undivided attention a day. Sounds so easy doesn't it? But if I'm being truthful, days go by without this one on one and it slips so easily.
I can say I'm not a fan of electronics, and for me personally that's true. But my kids all own DS's and play with our i phones. When nagging starts when I'm making dinner, the TV goes on. And my kids love them all. But recently I noticed that I was really the one in charge of all this. And while it's so much easier to let them all sit peacefully and play their video games so my house can be perfectly clean and all the laundry done and put away, I don't like the feeling of going to bed and thinking I did nothing with them. And there is no benefit in learning to come up with imaginative play among each other. So I've turned everything off during dinner prep and banned them to the playroom. It's a fantastic space after all. And guess what, they have come up with very cool things to do up there. It's not all roses- I do interfere with any fighting or not nice words being exchanged, but for the most part they do great, just playing.
My next mission, to spend 30 minutes a day with the littles playing with a no battery toy. Turn off my cell phone, get down on the floor and just play. They LOVE it. I learn a lot about them and they get so much out of my attention. I really need to stick with this, for their benefit and mine. We do a ton of crafts around here but we need to incorporate play a lot more.
Today we played with magna tiles. I highly recommend this toy for imaginative play. The tiles stick no matter what and there are no directions, just build.